Living the life in Saint-Aignan: Search results for "château du Moulin"

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15 August 2025

La Ferté-Imbault

The Château de la Ferté-Imbault is just about half and hour's drive east of The Château du Moulin. Between the two is the town of Romorantin-Lanthenay (known locally as "Romo"). It doesn't appear in any of my guidebooks, though it is worth a visit. The population of the village is about one thousand.

A château-fort was built on this site starting in the year 980. During the 100 Years' War between the English and the French in the 14th and 15th centuries, that building was destroyed, as was the neighboring village. A new château was built during the Renaissance in the 16th century. That château was destroyed by fire in 1562, during the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants. La Ferté-Imbault was re-built in the early 17th century.

The Château de la Ferté-Imbault is the largest brick château in the Sologne region of France.

I remember having dinner at the restaurant pictured above. In French the word lard means bacon or pork belly. What we call lard (rendered pork fat) is known as saindoux in France. The expression tête de lard is an insult used to describe a person who is ignorant and obstinate.

14 August 2025

Le Château du Moulin

According to another guidebook I have, Les Guides Illustrés (Hachette, 1924) the Château du Moulin was built between the years 1489 and 1502 by Philippe du Moulin, a loyal servant of the French king Charles VIII. The Château du Moulin is less than 15 miles southeast of Cheverny and was built of red and black brick with stone accents. The author of the Cadogan guide to the Loire calls it "the romantic star of the brick châteaux of the Sologne" and says it is "a dreamy place hidden in the countryside." It is surrounded by a wide moat and accessible via drawbridge.

28 June 2023

Le château du Moulin

Depuis janvier 2020, le château du Moulin est définitivement fermé à la visite et mis en vente par ses actuels propriétaires.

That's what I just read on French Wikipédia.

Le Moulin was built over the last 20 years of the 15th century by king Charles VIII for his childhood friend Philippe du Moulin. Philippe had saved the king's life in a battle in Italy in 1495 and was knighted by the king. The Cadogan Loire guidebook explains that Le Moulin was built at the time of the transition from Gothic to Renaissance styles.

I've been to the château du Moulin several times over the years, starting in the year 2000. We were staying in a gîte in Vouvray that year. Le Moulin was still lived in by the woman who owned it. We arrived at about 6:30 p.m. on an October evening. The people at the front gate were getting ready to close up for the night, but they did one more guided tour, just for us. Inside the château, at one point we saw the owner discreetly disappear into her private quarters, closing the door behind her. We had surprised her. Here's a link to some of my earlier posts about le Moulin, with many photos.

08 May 2021

Looking closely

We had a technician here yesterday afternoon to tinker with our boiler. It was working enough for us to get some heat since we had fuel delivered Thursday morning, but periodically it would just shut down for no apparent reason. It seems to be working fine now, but we don't know exactly what the techician did to repair it. It doesn't matter, since we have a service contract with the company that installed the thing, for emergencies like these. When the boiler needs repair, we don't have to pay labor charges. We do have to pay for any parts that need replacing. Of course, now the weather has really warmed up and we don't really need heat. We probably won't need heat again until October. Still, on ne sait jamais. There can be cold mornings in late spring and in summertime in this climate, even in July and August.

These are some close-up shots of things that caught my eye at the Château de Carrouges
on some of my visits there.

I was just reading the pamphlet that the staff at Carrouges gives to visitors. It points out that the decision
to build the château out of bricks was made because there was a lot of clay
in the local soil but not much stone for building.

The Ancient Romans used bricks as a building material. Bricks also became popular toward
the end of the middle ages and the begining of the Renaissance in France.

One wing of the Château de Blois was built using brick. The Château du Moulin over near Romorantin,
20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, was built with brick in the late 1400s.

I suppose it was more cost-effective to make bricks and build with them that it would have been
to move loads of stone over long distances — without trucks or railroads.

Lichens like stone. They grow all around us on stone walls, and on tree trunks and limbs too.
They don't seem to grow well on bricks. At least not at Carrouges.

12 October 2020

Le Château du Moulin, en Sologne

Again, I quote from the Cadogan guidebook for the Loire Valley: "The Château du Moulin, lost in the Sologne woods 12 kilometres [7 miles] west of Romorantin-Lanthenay,is the romantic star of the brick châteaux of the Sologne. It's a dreamy place, hidden in the countryside, reached by an alley of oaks you have to walk down, and surrounded by trees dipping their branches into the moat. Swans swim elegantly in its waters. The buildings that remain are fragmnts of a more solid ensemble..."

The Château du Moulin, built in the 1480s (as was the Château de Fougères-sur-Bievre) is about 15 miles east of Saint-Aignan in the Sologne, a "natural region" of sandy soil, ponds, lakes, and pine and birch forests. It's flat and the soil is clay and sand, so bricks were the main building material for houses and châteaux. The Michelin guidebook says that Le Moulin was originally protected by high walls and turrets. Those were torn down in later centuries to make the place airier and more pleasant to live in.

The woman who owned the Château du Moulin lived there until recently (maybe she still does). I remember getting a glimpse of her when we toured the inside of the château in October 2000. We were the on last guided tour of the day, and I think we caught her off guard when we entered a room that was part of her apartments. The pictures in my slideshow here are some that I took in 2004 when, if memory serves, CHM and I visited Le Moulin, which is just 15 miles northeast of Saint-Aignan.

And guess what I just learned — the Château du Moulin is now closed to the public and has been on the market since last January. You can buy it for a couple or three million euros. It's described as having 30 rooms, including 20 bedrooms, and 100 acres (39 hectares) of land. Here's a link.

And here's a video I found on YouTube:

27 May 2017

Maisons de Saint-Aignan

On the south bank of the Cher River, on one of the main roads coming into Saint-Aignan from the west, is a small complex of buildings occupied by the Hôtel du Moulin. There's also a big parking lot where you can leave your car and walk into town — to the Saturday morning open-air market in the old town, for example. When we first came here in 2002, there was a restaurant in the main building, but it closed down years ago. We had our first meal in Saint-Aignan there, 15 years ago.

On the main street that runs through town, one of the houses you see is the one below, which is 500 or 600 years old. A few years ago, a strong gust of wind blew one of its chimneys off. Bricks came crashing down onto the street. Luckily, nobody was injured.

The house above was built in the 1400s, so it's one of the oldest houses in the town. It's also on the main street, which is of course open to car traffic (one way).

I think the one above is very picturesque. It's on a side street just next to the main entrance of the old church. I don't know anything about the history of the house.

Finally, this house is on the château grounds. It used to be the château's gatehouse, but now it is operated as a vacation rental or gîte by one of the sons of the woman who owns and lives in the château.

10 July 2016

Strawberries, apples, and pears

Not only do they grow strawberries at the Château du Moulin...

...but they also have a lot of apple and pear trees on the grounds.

I especially liked this tree and the outbuildings in the background.

This last photo is just to remind you what the Château du Moulin looks like.

I'm in Paris this morning, heading back to Blois and Saint-Aignan this afternoon. Yesterday morning I climbed up to the top of the Panthéon, and I'll show some pictures tomorrow.

09 July 2016

Fraises

Fraises is French for strawberries. The Château du Moulin, near Romorantin and 20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, has dubbed itself the strawberry "conservatory" for France.

The strawberry is a "false fruit" made up of a fleshy mass in which are embedded the real, tiny yellow fruits that seem like seeds. ("In fact," the French says, "every time we think we are eating a strawberry, we are really eating a whole bunch of fruits at the same time."

Picking the berries

Making the confiture

I'll let you read this last poster. By the time you read this, I should be in Paris...

04 July 2016

Details — Château du Moulin

Here are a few photos of architectural details at the Château du Moulin, located near the town of Romorantin in the Loir-et-Cher (France). I was there again on July 2, 2016, after previous visits in 2000, 2003, and 2008.

The guide said this elaborate geometrical pattern in the brickwork seems to depict an African game called le jeu des crottes de chameau, played by children in the Sahara Desert. That would be "the camel dung game", for which the "board" is traced in the sand by the people who play it. Nobody knows why the pattern appears on a such an old wall in central France.

This is the coat of arms of the family of Philipped du Moulin, who had the château built in the last quarter of the 15th century. He wasn't really a nobleman, but he had saved the life of the French king during a battle in Italy. The king knighted or ennobled him on the spot and helped him build this château in the Sologne. Those are two lions carved into the stone.

Windows like these, above and below, are called fenêtres à meneaux, or mullioned windows, and are characteristic not of fortified medieval châteaux but of buildings designed to serve as comfortable residences.

Such windows show that the Château du Moulin is a transitional structure, built as the tumultuous Middle Ages and the 100 Years War waned and the more peaceful era called the Renaissance began in France, around the year 1500. The larger windows let a lot more daylight shine into the building, making it a more pleasant place to live.

03 July 2016

Fortified

Yesterday afternoon, I drove with our friend Peter Hertzmann, who's here for a long-planned weekend visit, over to the village of Lassay-sur-Croisne, near Romorantin, and spent a couple of hours at the Château du Moulin. It made me think of our friend Cheryl, who passed away at the end of the week, because we went there with her in 2003. Our first visit to Le Moulin was with Cheryl's cousin and friend Sue, in 2000 — 16 years ago already!

Peter and I took the guided tour of the inside of the château, as we had done with Sue and then Cheryl in 2001 and 2003. The tour was much more professionally done that it was back then, and the guide was very informed and informative. The château is no longer occupied by its owner, a woman who was something like 93 when she died in 2010. Before her death, knowing that somebody actually lived in the château made the tours feel like you might be invading somebody's privacy — but it was her choice to open her "house" up to the public. Now it feels more like a tourist attraction than a residence.

The Château du Moulin was built over the last quarter of the 15th century, and in a sort of faux medieval style. At that time, the French Renaissance was gaining steam, some of the grandest Loire Valley châteaux were being built. The new style was to build grand, more comfortable residences than fortified military structures. The guide said the Moulin never saw warfare but was mainly a fancy residence in a forest. It was "moated" and sort of semi-fortified for protection from bandits and highwaymen — and because the man who had it built liked the old style of architecture.

29 May 2016

Ballooning : Le Trophée François Ier

It turned out that the hot-air balloon event we had witnessed involved as many as 25 entrants, so we had only seen about half of them. It's called Le Trophée François Ier. There's a Facebook page about it.

I grabbed this 2015 image off the Trophée François Ier Facebook page... with my thanks. It shows the late 15th century Château du Moulin, about 20 miles east of Saint-Aignan, near Romorantin.

Unfortunately, yesterday's flight had to be canceled because of the threat of stormy weather. Here's a local newspaper's article about the annual ballooning event, with a video shot just a few days ago up at Cheverny, about 20 miles north of Saint-Aignan.

As I said, I couldn't get any long shots of the balloons other than the ones I posted yesterday, because they were just too close to the house. But I did take a lot of zoomed images of the individual balloons as they floated by.

The balloonists were lucky to have a beautiful morning on Thursday. We had had a violent thunderstorm overnight, but the day dawned clear and calm. Yesterday storms threatened but never materialized here at Saint-Aignan. In Paris, three adults and eight children were injured when they were struck by lightning in the Parc Monceau, near the Arc de Triomphe. Rain delays were called at the French Open tennis tournament up there in the afternoon.

10 February 2016

Le Château du Moulin (3)

Here are a few detail shots of the château from different angles. Just looking at them boosts my morale a little. I can console myself right now with the idea that it will be June again soon and I'll be able to go back to Le Moulin and other beautiful Loire Valley places before too long.

According to the official web site, the Château du Moulin is closed for the winter season until Easter. Even if it were open, I wouldn't have driven there over the past few days, what with the stormy weather we've been having.

Strong winds have blown limbs out of some of our trees. Heavy rains have created torrents of water on some streets, and big ponds of water in low spots. I had to go out in the car yesterday, so I can report from personal experience that it was a wild and woolly day in Saint-Aignan.

But back to Le Moulin: as I've said, I would never have made the hour-long drive from Vouvray, where we were staying, to see it in October 2000 if I hadn't noticed an almost stray photo in the Michelin green guide. I had never heard of it before. It is off the beaten track of the major Loire sights, over in the Sologne woods. As it was, we didn't get there until late in the day — there was a lot to see along the way.

The Cadogan guide says of Le Moulin: "The brick changes colour here and there, going from orange to purple. The typical Sologne lozange patterns in the brick give way at one point to an intriguing pattern of squares within squares." You can see that in my close-up photo above.

09 February 2016

Le Château du Moulin (2)

We're having really stormy weather right now. Yesterday morning the winds were hard and gusty. When I went out with the dog, it started pouring rain and we got soaked. This morning a new storm front is moving in, so we can expect more of the same.

Meanwhile, here are a few more photos of the Château du Moulin, near the big town of Romorantin. The village right next to the château is called Lassay-sur-Croisne, and at the church there you can see a wall painting showing what Le Moulin looked like centuries ago, before all the modern modifications were made.

When the last descendant of Philippe du Moulin died in the year 1900, the château was bought by a certain Maurice Compaignon de Marchéville, who he spent a dozen or more years having it modernized. His descendant still occupied the place as recently as 15 years ago, when we caught a glimpse of her on our guided tour, and maybe she still does. She discreetly closed the door to what looked like her upstairs kitchen as we trooped into her bedroom to see all the old furniture, furnishings, and paintings.

One of the most interesting rooms to visit is the old kitchen, which dates back to the Renaissance, I think. It features a cavernous fireplace with a spit for roasting meat, and there's a little round cage that they put a dog in. When the dog ran, the spit turned. As the guide told us when we did the tour, that might have been the invention of the hot dog!

The Château du Moulin web site says that Philippe du Moulin's birthdate remains a mystery to this day. There is one figure in a wall painting in the church at Lassay-sur-Croise who might well be du Moulin. He died in eastern France in 1506 in the town of Langres, of which he had become the governor, and he was buried there — but his heart was removed from his body and brought back to the church in Lassay, according to his wishes.

I'm translating from the Château du Moulin web site. All the photos in these posts are ones I took on June 27, 2004, when CHM and I went and walked around the château.